Pandora is a Death World. Some of its locations, however, are even worse.
Main game
- Many players are in for a rude awakening when they get to the Caustic Caverns. The entire place is filled with pools of acid that will damage you if you step in it, and populatted with Threshers, Varkids, and Spiderants. It's absolutely massive, making it take forever to get anywhere, and there are very few vending machines, making it very likely you'll run low on ammo. Oh, and there are a lot of side missions that take place there, so you'll probably have to come back several times over the course of the game. There's a single shortcut going back to the main entrance, but it's initially locked behind a locked gate that forces you to go around the entire map to get at the one switch that opens it up and lets you open it again from the other side... and it's not made obvious that you can open this gate - plenty of other gates in this level are totally inaccessible. If you haven't already, this will either be the first stage to truly test your patience, or realize that running past all the enemies is a perfectly valid strat. Thankfully, it's also entirely optional.
- The Fridge - populated exclusively by rats, midgets, crystalisks, and rakk, which are all annoying enough by themselves. It takes a lot more patience and care than most levels, since crystalisks in particular can kill you easily in packs. In True Vault Hunter Mode and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, the Rats will also steal anything, especially your money.
- The Highlands, due to being full of Hyperion forces, Stalkers, and Threshers, all of them Demonic Spiders. The icing on the cake, however, comes from the Overlook sub-area, which comes right after The Fridge. When you first arrive (from its back), you're forced into a Hold the Line story mission, protecting a beacon while Loaders, Surveyors and later Constructors pour into the town. If the beacon goes down, you have to repair it... while under heavy fire from the robots. And then the amount of time you have to hold on for resets. If you die, you have to fight through the horde just to get back to where you were. And if you do really badly, and let the beacon get destroyed a couple of times, Jack will chime in to say how much you suck. There is a reason why Overlook is considered the most annoying level by nearly all players.
- Wildlife Preservation Area has you go and fight dozens of loaders-including a Super Badass Loader who will happily spam his fire cannons at you until your shield breaks (although you can defeat him by taking cover in the dome and attacking him with a sniper rifle, then retreating when he starts firing), teleporting Needle Stalkers, Badass Shock Skags, and finally Bloodwing, in an area with almost no cover, and dozens of skags. And if you die? She gets back to full health again and the same form before, meaning you have to weaken her again and again.
- Within this area is the Natural Selection Annex, which doesn't have the benefit of having a fast travel point unlike the other arenas. There is also no re-entry method for the exit, making revisiting this place for sidequests basically a repeat runthrough of the entire map.
- Opportunity is also a tough one. Loaders by the ton, loads of Engineers (who have better aim and higher mobility than Loaders), Constructors are common, and one of the missions is an Escort Mission. In fact, quite possibly the only real Escort Mission in the entire game (most of the NPC's you are "escorting" are invincible).
- Lynchwood is basically a massive town CRAWLING with bandits. The map's size and lack of shortcuts (as well as the presence of Lab Rats) make questing here rather troublesome. Much like the Caustic Caverns, the area is optional, but considering all of the character interactions and the potential for good loot and face the person responsible for the rift between Roland and Brick, the temptation to go anyways is much higher.
- Sawtooth Cauldron, despite also being a Breather Episode, can get pretty hairy. This, alongside the aforementioned Lynchwood, is the most fortified bandit location in the game, with said bandits often pulling a Zerg Rush on the player. Buzzards control the skies and Threshers populate some of the more open fields. Clearing out each section of the camp is a pretty tall order.
Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt
- While not especially hard, the two primary maps are ungodly large and lack Catch-A-Boat stations in several places where they'd be desirable, making it take an enormously long time to get from one place to another. A number of sidequests in this DLC can also be failed, which (if that happens) requires trekking all the way back to Hammerlock or Claptrap to reset them, which translates to upwards of a fifteen-minute trip between attempts. For more straight reasons, the savage enemies are tonka-tough (especially the Voodoo Savages and their abilities to heal their allies as well as siphoning your health), and the animals aren't any more vulnerable. God help those who have built a shock-element arsenal, as nobody here has any shields, rendering shock weapons useless.
Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragon Keep
- The Lair of Infinite Agony sure lives up to its name. The place is full of Skeletons and Spiders, with a few Necromancers on the side. There are many rooms where the player must Hold the Line by destroying every mook in sight. There's also an infamous puzzle involving passing a hallway full of traps without getting crushed.
